


tell me what you're waitin' for

by twoif



Category: Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Emotional Constipation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 13:11:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoif/pseuds/twoif
Summary: Steven makes out. Steven freaks out.They still had the steak episode to film. It was unbearable to be that close to Andrew all the time and to not be making out with him. Steven felt like an explorer who had discovered a new land mass, Makingoutitca, and he just wanted to keep going back. Even Andrew's puns seemed charming to him, suddenly, which was awful, because they were both giddy and a little hungover and less witty than even their usual low bar. "You certainly can't appreciate this tree," Andrew cut in as they stood under a banyan tree with a particularly dense cluster of aerial roots. "Because you're," he paused, derailed by Steven swinging the camera back at him, "stupid," he finished and licked his lips, laughing, and it took everything in Steven's power to keep himself from throwing himself at Andrew and catching it all on camera. Or maybe, at least, their feet as they made out.





	tell me what you're waitin' for

**Author's Note:**

  * For [matchsticks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/gifts).



Afterwards, Steven thought it was probably the wine that made them do it. He recognized that it was a cliche, but he couldn't help it. It was the kind of thing that other people did in college, wasn't it, getting drunk and making out with a friend in Australia. "Yeah, when backpacking," Jen texted back, after he freaked out, crept out of bed and into the bathroom while stifling tearful hysterics, and sent her a series of all-caps texts summarizing his evening. He could almost hear her rolling her eyes.

 _THIS IS GOURMET BACKPACKING_ , he shot back. _IT COUNTS._

 _anyway your dicks didn't touch_ , Jen reminded him. _so your still a disney princess and can marry prince eric or whatever, if thats what worries you_.

"No one wants to marry Prince Eric," he hissed at his phone. "Jen, please."

Outside in the bedroom he could hear Andrew stir. He cracked open the door, pressing his face into the frame to peer out, but something — the door, maybe, or his emphatic hissing— must have woken up Andrew anyway, who sat up sleepily, accidentally showing off every muscle of his shirtless upper body while doing so. "Why are you so far over there?" Andrew said, which in the mouth of anyone else would sound like a whine, and in Andrew's sounded more like a insult with a punchline he hadn't quite figured out. And it must have been the wine, something about the wine they drank the day before, and the way the light hit Andrew in this room, and being on vacation with coworkers who were getting to be friends, something he'd never done before, really, that had to be it. Because why else did he walk over and kneel down by Andrew, and why else was he grinning like a maniac at seeing Andrew's bedhead, sticking up in four different directions and none of them sexy, and why else did he find himself leaning up for a kiss, even though he really could tell Andrew hadn't yet brushed his teeth? When they separated there was a look on Andrew's face, surprise and delight and a funny whiff of relief, like he too had been worried all of last night was just a weird tannin-infused dream, and Steven felt like his chest was swelling and contracting at the same time, like it was too big for his body and not big enough for his lungs to take in all the air he needed to deal.

"Hey," Andrew murmured.

"Hey yourself," Steven managed to squeak out.

Powerful stuff, that wine, he thought hazily, and met Andrew in the middle for another kiss.

*

They still had the steak episode to film. Three more days in Australia, and it was unbearable to be that close to Andrew all the time and to not be making out with him. Steven felt like an explorer who had discovered a new land mass, Makingoutitca, and he just wanted to keep going back. Even Andrew's puns were charming to him, suddenly, which was awful, because they were both giddy and a little hungover and less witty than even their usual low bar. "You certainly can't appreciate this tree," Andrew cut in as they stood under a particularly dense cluster of aerial roots. "Because you're," he paused, derailed by Steven swinging the camera back at him, "stupid," he finished and licked his lips, laughing, and it took everything in Steven's power to keep himself from throwing himself at Andrew and catching it all on camera. Or maybe, at least, their feet as they made out.

Intimacy was a drug, Steven decided, and he was the kind of person that was easily susceptible to addiction, to strong emotions. It made sense to him now, why new couples were always pawing at each other in public. He found himself pushing buttons, seeing how close he could get to flaunting it without giving it away. They shoved at each other, trying to shove each other off of cliffs, into water, into each other. They were like puppies play-fighting, like a disgusting high school couple who couldn't keep their hands off each other and kept trying to find excuses to talk about how obsessed they were with each other.

"All the best things in life are done with your eyes closed," he heard himself saying as they tore into their first steak at Rockpool. "Sleeping. Making out." His brain short-circuited at saying "making out" aloud, and he halted, unable to think of any other things, stuck on the image of Andrew lifting a piece of steak to his lips, juxtaposed with Andrew's lips pressed against his.

"I can't disagree with that," Andrew said, chortling, and Steven was glad Andrew was looking into the camera then, and not at Steven, so that only Adam had to see him choke.

He wanted to consume Andrew, like a piece of meat, in pieces and slowly, or share himself with Andrew the same way. To gnaw on Andrew's fingers. To let Andrew tear into him, swallow him whole. That was probably the fault of all the food they were eating, and not any latent cannibalistic tendencies. Probably.

*

Three seasons in, and Worth It was no longer the third or fourth BuzzFeed attempt at making a traveling food show starring two personalities in a car with a quiet cameraman. Now, it was a full-on production, with an insanely tight filming schedule that didn't allow them a chance to breathe. The show still came out on a weekly basis, sure, but neither Steven nor Andrew could afford to be away from the office for that long, and with the budget expanding to include different cities, then different cities in different countries, it no longer looked like occasional videologs of Steven taking his co-workers to lunch and more resembled a movie shoot that just happened to include three restaurant scenes a day. Back in 2016, along with his kpop transformation, Steven had spent a day with a real live kpop star, Amber, and she'd touched what it was like to have an idol's schedule: 14 hours practicing, waking up at the crack of dawn for an evening music show, carefully composing tweets for public consumption, and the occasional fanmeeting. 

Worth It couldn’t compare, but filming a season sometimes felt like an all-consuming thing, a summer camp, but instead of band it was just him and two friends nerding out over food. When they were doing it, it was the only thing he could think about. He focused his life through Worth It, and it felt like every breath he took went towards the show. It wasn't just steak and wine and seafood in Australia. It was going back to New York, for another visit with David Chang, surrounded by double handfuls of caviar; it was talking about sex between mouthfuls of spicy fried chicken at Yardbird, the flirting as dangerous as the hot honey sauce; it was Steven wanting a breakfast date with Andrew and Andrew not being able to say no. "You'll miss the cheese when you're in Japan," Steven said as he looked up places to eat breakfast tacos and queso. 

Andrew gave him a look. "We're going to be there for a week, tops. That's not enough time to miss anything."

"What about me?" Steven joked. "Would you miss me after a week?"

"I'd be more like, 'thank god, it's finally quiet here,'" Andrew said, then glanced around to make sure no one was looking when he leaned over to slip his hand under Steven's shirt, pinching Steven's nipple, making him gasp, then laugh. 

"It's cute when you guys do things like that," Adam said afterwards. They were going over their Japan schedule one more time, or at least Steven was, while Andrew was in the bathroom, Rie was hovering over Niki talking about cheesecake, and Adam was half-heartedly editing their brunch video. 

"What?" Steven asked, distracted by a Slack message from Jen that turned out just to be a gif of a doughnut. 

"When Andrew fed you, at brunch. It's cute. Giving the viewers what they want."

"They want Andrew feeding me?"

Evan leaned over from behind his monitor, his hair coiffed perfectly to show off his waggling eyebrows. "Didn't anyone ever teach you? They like when you and Andrew do that thing where it's like you're dating but you're not really dating."

"Read your YouTube comments," Adam snickered. "That's all they're ever about."

Steven felt his mouth go dry. "I'm not, like, doing it because of the comments." Adam stared at him blankly, and Steven went red. "I'm not!" _It's not a joke, I'm not teasing._ It was on the tip of Steven's tongue to say, but that would be too genuine, too close to the truth. Instead he opened his mouth, shut his mouth, and then managed, "It's not on purpose."

"What a natural salesman," Evan scoffed. "First you sell that Andrew hates you and now you sell that Andrew loves you."

"Does he?" Steven squeaked.

"At least enough for the camera," Adam joked, and turned back to his editing. 

*

Later that afternoon, Steven scribbled CAN WE TALK in big block letters on a Post-It and stuck it to Andrew's mouse. Andrew, who had been politely pretending that Steven was being sneaky, watched him with a smirk. "'Can we talk,'" Andrew mouthed as he plucked the Post-It off his mouse. "I don't know," he said, ripping up the note into little, neat squares. "Can we? Or can we only communicate through sticky note semaphore?"

Steven blinked. "Semi-what?"

"Never mind." Andrew whirled his office chair around and scooted closer to Steven. "Sure, let's talk."

"Uh, I didn't mean, talk right this moment. I meant, like." Steven wiggled his fingers, jazz-hand style. " _Talk_."

Andrew rolled his eyes. "Okay. So, maybe I can come over later this evening."

"Only Jen comes over to my house." Steven blurted out, and then immediately felt mortified. From the next pod over, Shane threw a handful of rubber snakes at Ryan and ended up pegging everyone else in the eye with a rubber tail. Steven took advantage of the chaos and grabbed blindly at one of the rubber snakes, then flung it onto Andrew's lap like an offering.

Andrew didn't look impressed. "Okay," he said, and dangled the rubber snake between his fingers, one eyebrow raised. 

Steven swallowed. "Wait. You can come over though. It's fine. Uh, yeah. Fine."

Andrew narrowed his eyes. "It doesn't sound fine."

"Can we just—do you want to just—" Steven gestured at a hallway full of break-out rooms behind them, usually where people took naps to recover from post-vodka-testing hangovers or brainstormed ways to secretly kidnap their best friend with a team of mall cops. "I changed my mind," Steven said, gesturing wildly. "Let's do it right now."

"Mid-year evaluations," Andrew pointed out.

"Okay, something else—"

They ended up settling for a fake kitchen set, where BuzzFeed was filming some food taste test video, which was probably sponsored by something totally unrelated to food, like an underwear company or Quinta's mom. The set was made for two people to be seated across from each other, and for some reason had a functioning sink that was dripping once every half a minute. In the dim light, it looked a little haunted.

Andrew took a seat. Steven considered his options, and then collapsed into the chair across from him, tapping nervously at the table.

"This is awkward," Andrew began. 

"Yes. Yes it is."

"Now you just made it more awkward." Andrew's voice was slow, measured, the voice he used to use when he was still mostly That Guy Who Made Videos About Being Awkward and Was Ashly's Crush (Oh Yeah Before Ashly Came Out As Gay). It also made him sound a little like a jerk, which Steven thought was probably a defense thing, and also maybe his own paranoia. 

He took a deep breath. "I just wanted to make sure that you were like —okay. With this."

"With, like, _this_?" Andrew gestured between the two of them. "Okay. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I just think there's a lot of reasons why this might be a bad idea. We work together—"

"We work with plenty of people who met at work—"

"And before Worth It, we weren't even really, like, friends—"

"Shane and Sara, for instance—"

"A-and I don't want you to feel like you had to do this. Just because. Just because you felt like you had to, because of the show, or because I was coming onto you, or _liked you_ or something." Steven swallowed. He thought about whether he'd ever told Andrew that he liked him, and then wondered if he did actually like Andrew, and then toed along the yawning chasm of vulnerability and embarrassment that that question opened up in his chest and was terrified. Probably he had told Andrew, in New York, after they were drunk on fried chicken and caviar and Andrew had said, _really? You've never, with anyone?_ and looked like he wanted to say something else but instead tucked Steven into bed and laid down on top of the sheets next to Steven, in that tiny double bed, and said, _it's okay to go your own pace. We can do whatever you want._

Steven took a deep breath. "We can stop if you want. It won't affect the series."

In the half-light of the fake kitchen set, Andrew's eyes seemed very dark, very bottomless. The light deepened the shadows on his face and his arms, crossed over his chest, and made Andrew seem a little dangerous somehow. Still attractive, Steven thought to himself absently. Just scary, like a large cat curled up and waiting to attack. 

"Is that how you feel?" Andrew asked, leaning back in his chair. "Like I’m just tolerating you?"

"I-I don't know."

"You don't know?" Andrew had been balancing on the back two legs of his chair, but now he put all his weight down. The sound of the chair landing on all four legs seemed too loud, like maybe Andrew was going to break the chair and they would have to explain to someone that no, they weren't having an awkward heart-to-heart in a fake kitchen, they were just making ghost noises to scare Ryan with in the next episode of Unsolved. Steven winced. ""So let me ask you this," Andrew continued. "Would _you_? Just make out with someone because you were worried about viewership?"

"I don't know! Maybe." He paused, to try to give himself more time to think, but the silence was definitely dangerous now. Steven sneaked a look at Andrew's face, then immediately glanced away, moving his hands nervously across the smooth surface of the table, trying to soak up the chill and calm himself down. "No, obviously I don't think that. I just don't know what I think. Because it just feels so sudden, like one moment you were pretending to hate me and find me annoying and the next minute we're feeding each other and you're— we're—"

 _Kissing_. _Making out. Kind of seeing each other secretly when we're filming Worth It_. 

"Like we might be. Friends." 

He was waiting for Andrew to raise his voice or reach over and slap Steven in the face. That's what people did in movies, or in TV shows, or in BuzzFeed shorts. Instead Andrew got up, very precisely, like each movement was a piece of origami he was unfolding from his body. "You know what. I think you're right." His voice, too, precise and measured. He wasn't looking at Steven now. Instead, he pushed in his chair and dusted off his lap, as if they really had eaten a meal here in someone's kitchen. "Maybe this is a bad idea."

Dazed, Steven stood up halfway, almost overturning the table. "What?"

"You can get back to me when you decide whether or not I'm an evil puppetmaster controlling you with my kissing skills." For one brief, hot second, Andrew met Steven's eyes, his mouth drawn into a thin, unhappy line. Then, he turned away. "I've got editing to do," he said, and didn't look back. 

*

A week later, they were in Japan.

"This is it, right?" Steven said, trying to sound excited. "We've peaked with Worth It."

"Do you have to sound so unhappy about it?" Rie laughed. 

"We've peaked with Worth It," Steven tried again, raising his arms like he could summon up the energy. 

"Yes," Andrew grunted, and looked away. 

"We're going to have to rerecord all of your lines in post," Adam warned. He sounded peeved. Steven winced. There was nothing worse than working with a pissy Adam.

"Fine," Andrew said, loudly, and clearly, and very, very dully. 

For a trip they'd been talking up since the beginning of Season 3, they were all having a not-very-good time. Steven spent most of the time stuck to Rie's hip, always eager to run errands with her or constantly pestering her to explain street signs or translate bits of conversations overheard on the street. Why was Andrew was subdued, Rie kept asking, worried and too polite to ask Andrew directly. "Jetlag," Steven offered, trying to sound normal. "And also the heat." Rie didn't seem convinced, and Adam actively rolled his eyes at Steven when she wasn't looking.

Both of those things were true, to a certain extent. The jetlag was doing a number on everyone, and Andrew had always handled hot weather very poorly. When he was in a good mood, it made him clumsy and hyper and a little dumb. In his current mood, it made him seem like a toddler who'd been woken up from a nap too early, or a teenager In A Mood, and only Steven knew that The Mood was because of him. The heat gave cover to Andrew's abrupt quiet turn, but with Andrew taking a back seat, it was up to Steven to keep up the energy. The humidity of the Tokyo summer felt like a wall, and he pushed against it and Andrew's reticence both. Which made him tired, which made them all tired, which made Adam pissy and Rie nervous. 

"But at least," Rie fretted as they neared their final two days in Japan, "there will be cake."

In the end, it was the cake that made it all okay. No one, Steven thought, could be mad while eating cake, and even if cake had never been Andrew's favorite, it would take a special kind of monster to sulk through the fluffy cheesecake at Pablo's or a solid slab of chocolate at Theobroma. Andrew wasn't that monster. It helped too, that the weather broke, just a little, enough so that Andrew didn't shrink back in disgust at Steven wearing long sleeves, and maybe that's why Steven found himself slipping back again, to before The Bad Conversation. The two of them, for the first time in Japan, found that rhythm again, hitting Steven's cheesecake to see it jiggle, making puns and talking, as they did in Australia, about the kind of restaurants they'd open. 

"It's like," Steven offered, putting his cheesecake down so that no one could see his hand shaking, "a gentle kiss."

Off-camera, Andrew smiled, and Steven felt it, like the most delicious cake he'd ever had. 

*

Their last day in Tokyo, they brought the melon cake to BuzzFeed Japan's headquarters, and after it was decimated and they were no longer filming, Steven came back to their set to see Andrew lying on the floor, stretched out with his hands behind his head. "Did the melon cake finally kill you?" Steven joked, but Andrew didn't move, just lay there, breathing slowly, steadily.

Outside, Steven could hear the soft tones of Rie and Saki chatting, unidentifiable male laughter, the clunking sound of pots and pans from someone filming and refilming a Tasty Japan short. Adam had gone back to their hotel room to pack up his film equipment, and for the moment, for the first time in a long while, he was alone with Andrew. He knew Andrew wasn't sleeping, but with his eyes closed, the neutral, but still slightly smiling, line of his mouth, it felt like Andrew was giving him permission. 

They had learned early on, before Worth It even, that two bodies on camera only looked natural when they were so close together they might as well be hugging. Whenever they filmed, they were pressed against each other, shoulder to elbow, and it was not something they ever had to discuss, just something they had done, from day one. Intimacy was a drug. They associated physical proximity with laughing, with enjoying each other's company despite the odds, with all the times they'd drunkenly taped Steven's phone into a Kleenex box or tried to push each other into the path of a moving New York subway train. It was like their bodies went on before them, mindless of whatever shit had gone down in their heads. There was a gravity only physical proximity could bring, and Steven understood it whenever he was close to Andrew. He thought, maybe, Andrew got it too.

He kneeled down on the floor, held his breath. When Andrew still didn't move, he lay down beside him, tentatively, curled up in a loose ball right under Andrew's elbow. His knee bumped against the side of Andrew's hip, and he was close enough that he could hear Andrew's breathing, but otherwise, they remained separate, untouching. 

He shut his eyes. Tried to mirror Andrew's breathing. And for the first time, felt almost at peace.

*

"Do you think things are ever less real just because other people are looking for it?"

Jen finally stopped trying to take a selfie of herself balancing three tapioca balls on her tongue and eyed Steven over her bubble tea. "Are you high right now? Did you film Worth It for weed or something?"

"Be serious." He waited a beat. "The High Guys would murder me if I did that without them."

She grinned. "Okay, so, this isn't drugs, this is just your brain."

"Remember that week where I tried to be Instagram famous, and I was taking all these pictures, of my food and my clothes and stuff? It was real, but it also wasn't. It wasn't my life. On Instagram or on the video."

"I get what you mean, but not really," she said. They both spent half a minute pensively playing with their straws before she finished mulling over her thought and continued, "Because it was real. It really happened. Even if it wasn't who you were or what you did after."

"Sometimes I think, I got to this place in my life by being true to who I am. And that's why people watch our videos. But to keep making these videos, we do all this crazy stuff that's not really who we are." 

Jen gave him a blank look. On her tiny face, it was a particularly comical expression, almost frog-like. Steven, momentarily derailed, started laughing. Annoyed, she gestured at him to continue, and when he kept laughing, she fished a tapioca ball out of her straw and threw it at his hair.

"All I mean is, do you think who we film is who we really are?" He hesitated. It wasn't the right question, but the right question was, _do you think filming Worth It has fooled me into thinking Andrew and I could maybe be in love with each other?_ which sounded crazy, even to Steven, and it was his question. Jen waited, patiently blowing bubbles into the rest of her drink. "Or, more like, do you think filming all this stuff is actually making us into people we aren't?"

Jen sat back, narrowing her eyes. She didn't look blank anymore. Instead, she seemed like she was seeing something about Steven in a new light, like he was some weird camera angle that wasn't working and she wasn't sure why. Nervous, he turned away from her and pretended to people watch some customers who were intensely debating the bubble tea customization options at the counter. After a moment, Jen tapped him on the left wrist. 

"Hey, remember when we got handcuffed together for that video?"

"Yeah," he said cautiously.

"We were friends, right? But not like, _friends_ friends. I mean, you'd never had me over to your house then. You'd never met my dog. But that day we really got to know each other. You brought me to church. You met my college friends. I FaceTimed your _mom_."

"I met Jeff," Steven said. "Fuck Jeff," he added, because that was their little joke.

"Yeah, fuck him," Jen said enthusiastically, causing a mom with her infant daughter nearby to look at them in horror. "But my point is, no one actually goes around getting to know their friends better by handcuffing themselves. It's nothing something I would have done to get to know anyone better. But it made us better friends."

She tapped him again on the wrist. He smiled at her, a little querulously. "We do a lot of crazy things." Jen grinned, showing off three tapioca balls, like a strange black tongue stud, balanced over the flat of her tongue. Still chewing them, she finished, "but that doesn't mean they're not genuine, you know?"

*

When Steven got back to BuzzFeed, Andrew was eating lunch in the canteen. It was late for lunch, and there were only a few stragglers picking at salads. Andrew popped the corner of his sandwich into his mouth and stared Steven down as he lowered himself into the chair across from Andrew. He didn't look mean, or even angry, but just. Solid. Like a wall Steven was going to talk at.

"I want to talk to you," Steven said.

"Okay." Andrew crossed his arms, and Steven hated himself for noticing they still looked great, a little tanned from being outside so much in the Japanese sun. Warm, maybe. 

Steven bit his lip. "This is awkward. Could we do this, like," he paused, his voice rising almost an octave higher, "over drinks?"

Andrew looked almost amused. "You don't drink."

"Coffee," Steven offered. "Bubble… tea?"

"Out with it, Lim," Andrew ordered him, and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, as if to hide a smile.

Steven took a deep breath. Despite the impatient way Andrew had spoken, he had settled in, uncrossing his arms and folding his hands on the table between them, watching Steven closely as Steven tried to find the words. Andrew's fingers, intertwined, sturdy, larger than Steven's, gave him something to focus on. He tried to localize his heartbeat in his chest, told it sternly to calm down.

"I know things have been—weird. Between us."

He snuck a look at Andrew's face, which suddenly turned stormy. Hastily, Steven ducked his head back down and, like he was afraid he might be burned, touched a finger to the back of Andrew's hands. "I meant, since after we came back from Australia. Not—not before then. And I want you to know that it's not about you."

"I know it's not about me," Andrew said, then inhaled sharply, as if he hadn't meant to open his mouth. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "That came out wrong."

"No, no, you're right." Steven took another breath, and this time he put out his whole hand on the table between them, palm up, his finger just lightly brushing against Andrew's. Just a gesture, if Andrew wanted it to be, or a request to hold hands, if Andrew wanted that. Andrew glanced between Steven's palm and Steven's face, but didn't make a move. 

Steven continued, "It's my fault. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. But there's this part of me, you know, who will always be that twelve-year-old seeing someone pretty at the bus stop and thinking they're just fucking with me. And I know that's not fair to you. But I get it into my head, sometimes. Like, all this," he scanned Andrew's face, pleadingly, "BuzzFeed, Worth It, this job, you, my friends, it can't really be real. It's just some elaborate joke, and I'll wake up, and it'll have just been a cruel, cruel joke."

For a minute, neither of them said anything. Steven, fresh out of courage and words to say, let his hand flop onto the table, palms pressed against the cool surface. He watched it, as if from a distance: _oh, this person's hand is shaking_. He tried to make the trembling stop, but his hand felt stuck to the table. 

From the same strange distance, like he was watching a first person POV movie filmed from his own body, he watched Andrew unclasp his hands, then, slowly, centimeter by centimeter, reach for Steven's. Andrew let his hand fall on the back of Steven's, just for a second, before he pried Steven's palm off the table and placed it squarely in his own. Stunned, Steven couldn't even lift his head to look up at Andrew, and instead stared, fixedly, at their two hands on the table between them. 

"Since starting this job, I've done a lot of things," Andrew told him, voice husky and thick. "Things I wouldn't have done otherwise. But never—" He cleared his throat, taking Steven's hand this time in both of his. "I'd never fuck with you, you know that right?" When Steven didn't say anything, he pulled Steven's hand closer, almost greedily, as if trying to drag Steven across the table. Steven forced himself to look up, at the way the light fell across Andrew's face, lit off his eyes. Where he had seemed solid before, he was almost ethereal, lit up from the inside. 

"I'd never hurt you," he croaked. 

"You could never hurt me," Steven blurted out. "Because I love you."

He watched, fascinated, as Andrew's face broke open into a grin. "Guess what?" Andrew whispered. "I’m glad I can say the same."

*

"Road trip," Andrew said, hooking his chin over Steven's shoulder to get a better view of the laptop screen. "Definitely a road trip."

Steven flailed, trying to get Andrew to stop breathing down his neck, and almost spilled his water all over Andrew's computer. "You're just going to make me drive the whole time," he protested.

Andrew dug his chin in. "I know. Why do you think I'm advocating for it?"

"My bladder is tiny," Steven protested. "Microscopic. We'd have to use the bathroom like every fifty miles."

"Let's take Evan." Andrew was already scooting away, balling up an errant print out of a Wikipedia page so that he could throw it at Evan's head.

"I don't see how this solves the toilet problem!"

"It doesn't," Andrew called, over his shoulder. Then, scooting back and dropping his voice, he added, "but if he came, we'd have to get two rooms. And then we could, you know." Andrew moved one eyebrow up wickedly. "Fill you in on some things you've been missing out on."

Steven flushed a bright red. "I bet they'll make us book one room with two doubles and make us share," he grumbled. 

But he wrote it down in the proposal anyway. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Tell me what you're waitin' for](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15882378) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




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